Friday, July 15, 2011

Don't let Rixx kill you!

"If you happen to be a carebear person, just leave the d-scan alone, it won't help you. In fact I don't think it even works, so pay no attention to it."

Listen very carefully my carebear friends. Rixx is trying to KILL you. Don't listen to him! He doesn't want you to use your D-scan. He wants to sneak up on you nice an easy while you peacefully drill 'roids in situational ignonorance.

Here is the proper carebear ending to his Idiot's Guide.

Use your D-scan constantly. Set it to 360, lower the range to 3,000,000 Km (your optimal distance will vary depending on the amount of time it takes you to get to warp) and spam that button. As Rixx's ship warps in to kill you, it will have to slow down. That makes the last 3,000,000 Km of his trip last forever. Remember, in Eve forever is the amount of time it takes to warp your mining barge out of harm's way. Make sure you are aligned with a safe place (and not another belt or planet and for gods' sake not the sun!) Always do this. Do not forget or Rixx will kill you. The moment you see Rixx's, or any ship, on your D-scan hit warp. Don't wait. If you are concerned with being jumped by Rixx, you are already in a dangerous place. Hesitation will let Rixx get a point on you and then you are dead. Don't let him have it. Hit your warp button the moment anything shows up on your D-scan. It is more profitable to leave with a half load and live to mine another day than to be a frozen corpse floating outside Rixx's cockpit window.

The corollary to this amendment is how far out you should set your D-scan. If you leave it at max you will pick up a lot of passing traffic. That will cause you to be extremely jumpy, to say the least, and is unnecessary. Here is a very interesting forum thread concerning warp speeds that bears on how far to set your D-scan. Alair (comment #11) had this to say:

"Many warps are short enough (say ~20 AU) that the warp acceleration curve is the dominant factor. This is why your ships max warp speed often just doesn't mean much. You spend 90% of your time climbing exactly the same curve as everyone else, regardless of your maximum warp speed.Did some testing; 11.5AU warp takes between about 31.0s and 34.0s from the moment you click "warp to" with your aligned ship until the speedo "warping" message is replaced by some m/s figure. This was the same in a 3.0AU/s BS, a 9.0AU/s Inty and a 13.5AU/s covops. System had ~100 players and node lag caused a measurement error of +-1.5s. Whatever speed advantage the 13.5AU/s ship has is lost in the noise on a 12AU or less warp."

This is fairly accurate based on my experience. Since Rixx is limited to a 14 AU scan range it does not matter how fast his ship's warp is. He is curve bound. You can safely count on it taking at least 30 seconds for him to get to you. If your warp time is 8 seconds then you only need enough time to hit the button and warp - say 10 seconds if you are really slow. Set your D-scan to 1/3 its max range or about 4.5 million Km. If your warp time is less, set it lower and cut down on the number of false alarms.